Initial Public Offerings

Seagate Technology Holdings, the largest maker of computer disk drives by revenue, has filed to raise as much as $1 billion in an initial public stock offering. Seagate, which has operations in Scotts Valley, Calif., and its investors will sell an undisclosed number of common shares at a price to be determined later, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

BEIJING - DMG Entertainment, the Beijing-based company that co-produced Hollywood films including "Iron Man 3" and "Transcendence," is in the process of going public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The move will see DMG enter the exchange through a reverse takeover with meat-processing company Sichuan Gaojin Foods. The deal still needs regulatory approval. According to DMG and Sichuan Gaojin, the deal values DMG at $970 million. That's three times the value of Gaojin at the end of 2013.

Lazard, the world's largest investment banking partnership, is considering an initial public stock offering and has held discussions with five investment banks about a share sale, two people familiar with the matter said Thursday. An IPO would value the bank, headed by Bruce Wasserstein, 56, at about $3 billion, the people said. The company, run from New York, London and Paris, met bankers from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, UBS, Citigroup Inc. and Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc.

TrueCar .com, the Internet car-shopping company backed by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen and insurance giant USAA , plans an initial public stock offering. The Santa Monica company has grown rapidly over the last year by offering a platform for car shoppers to get an “upfront” price from dealers, thereby avoiding most of the haggling that occurs in auto shopping. TrueCar's revenue jumped 68% last year from 2012, to just under $134 million, but the company has never been profitable.

Pointcast Inc., which pioneered the Internet "push" technology that delivers customized news and information, has filed for an initial public stock offering. The Sunnyvale company said it planned to offer 3.8 million shares through underwriters BT Alex. Brown Inc. and BancAmerica Robertson Stephens. The offering price is expected to be between $10 and $12 a share. The company said in a statement that it plans to use proceeds for general corporate purposes and to expand its marketing efforts.

Javelin Systems Inc., which sells point-of-sale computers for the food service industry, said it hopes to raise nearly $6 million, less underwriting fees, through a proposed initial public stock sale. The company said it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell 850,000 shares of common stock for $5 to $7 per share. All of the shares are to be issued and sold by the company.

Stock prices of initial public offerings improved in the aftermarket during the third quarter, while at the same time the number of IPOs being brought to market declined. The trend marked a reversal from the first six months, when a heated IPO market brought hundreds of new issues to market, many at high prices relative to their subsequent trading.

Colorbus Inc., which makes computer network printer servers, is planning to offer stock to the public for the first time. The company said it could raise $46 million before expenses, according to a statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing did not specify the amount or expected price of shares to be offered, however.

MotorVac Technologies Inc., manufacturer of a proprietary automotive fuel system cleaning process, has filed for an initial public offering of 1.1 million shares of common stock. Lee Melody, president of the 3 1/2-year-old company, declined comment because the Securities and Exchange Commission is still reviewing the filings. He said MotorVac has not prepared a prospectus for the stock sale.

Smaller companies are issuing stock to the public for the first time at a record clip, with some of these shares rising as much as 50% in price within hours after their offering. But some analysts are concerned that individual investors may be snapping up these shares just as the market may be close to peaking. Surges in new stock issues often signal that the initial public offering market is overheating, said Robert S.

SAN FRANCISCO - As Twitter Inc. opened itself up to public scrutiny for the first time, it did not limit itself to 140 characters - not even to 140 pages. Twitter on Thursday made public 240 pages of documents it filed secretly over the summer, starting the countdown to one of the most hotly anticipated technology stock offerings since Facebook. The financial world was all atwitter as prospective investors pored over the filing that offered the first detailed look under the hood of the privately held company.

WASHINGTON -- Only about three out of ten investment bankers think new federal rules intended to encourage startups have led to more initial public offerings, according to poll results released Tuesday. The findings from BDO, an accounting and consulting company, cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act signed into law in April. Known as the JOBS Act, the bipartisan legislation was designed to give small businesses more access to capital by easing rules on stock offerings.

Bay Area solar energy company SolarCity Corp. is looking to raise as much as $151 million in its highly anticipated initial public stock offering. The San Mateo business - which helps residential, commercial and government clients such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., EBay and the U.S. military set up solar power-generating systems - said it expects its shares to sell for $13 to $15 each. The company plans to sell 10 million shares, while shareholders will offer 65,012 shares, SolarCity said in an amended filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Facebook resisted prodding by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose more about the risks from a burgeoning user base accessing the social-networking site from mobile devices, according to a news report. A lengthy article by Bloomberg News highlights letters between Facebook and the SEC's corporation finance division, which oversees what publicly traded companies disclose in regulatory filings before their initial public offerings. The letters, made public by the SEC, "depict a management team hesitant to disclose information and still guessing at even rudimentary aspects of its business just weeks before the company held the largest-ever technology initial public offering," Bloomberg News reported.

NEW YORK -- The market for initial public offerings may feel the effect of Facebook's botched IPO for months, a survey found. Of respondents to the survey by the Tabb Group, a Wall Street consulting and research firm, 46% said the market for IPOs would feel the effect for six months, while 39% believed the market could be slowed for a year or two. Of respondents to the survey by the Tabb Group, a Wall Street consulting and research firm, 46%...

WASHINGTON — There was so much support in Washington two months ago for loosening rules on initial public offerings that Republicans and Democrats effortlessly passed a bill making it easier for smaller companies to raise money on Wall Street. Now Facebook Inc.'s IPO debacle could erode that enthusiasm. As regulators and congressional committees review whether a reduced revenue forecast was improperly released only to certain large Facebook investors, some lawmakers and consumer advocates also are pushing for a thorough review of IPO rules with an eye toward tightening them.

So, against all odds, you managed to get your hands on a few shares of Facebook stock via one of the most hyped initial public offerings of all time and managed to survive its messy first day of trading. Congratulations. You're now married to Mark Zuckerberg. The 28-year-old company founder is today one of the most deeply-entrenched chief executives in American business. Thanks to a two-class stock structure, Zuckerberg will own about 28% of Facebook but control 57% of all shareholder votes.

SAN FRANCISCO — Dressed in his trademark hoodie and jeans, Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg kicked off a cross-country roadshow to pitch his company's initial public stock offering. Hundreds of institutional investors stood in long lines Monday to pile into a ballroom at New York's Sheraton Hotel to hear the billion-dollar pitch from the 27-year-old chief executive before his company's hotly anticipated IPO. The meeting was closed to the media. Facebook is trying to build excitement for the IPO that in a few weeks could value the company at more than $96 billion.